It's Hot in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

Caroline grabbed the iPad again and entered the 3-6-1-6-3-7 code once more. She opened Excel. Looking for financial folders, it took her ten minutes to home in on the document she wanted. Her fine arts degree from SUNY did not include math. She examined all the columns. Twice.

  There was so much more money than she knew.

  Holy Jesus.

  Next, she opened the iMessage texting app on his iPad. Eddie was too much of a hothead for technology. It frustrated him, and he often threw devices toward her, asking her to fix something. He wouldn’t know that the text messages on his phone would sync to his iPad if someone had his Apple ID.

  Men, supposedly so much “better” at math and science than women, were such technological idiots sometimes. Eddie Clarkson’s phone was now mirrored on his iPad. Many women she knew checked their husbands’ iPads whenever the men seemed to grab their phones too quickly to read an incoming text.

  After Eddie admitted in therapy the first time he’d strayed, he was apoplectic. She hadn’t snooped that time, she just knew. “But, honey. I just told her to piss off,” Eddie said, when they got back home from the appointment. “I’m not into it, I swear. I love you!” Eddie had grabbed her shoulders, while Caroline shook her head.

  “How dare you act like this is routine!” she said.

  “It was just fucking, that’s it. Zero attachment, I don’t even like her!”

  Caroline believed him, though she didn’t admit it. Eddie wasn’t attached to the woman. He loved only Caroline. She wondered if it was the same for his current object of affection. She scrolled through several pages of texts before finding a female name that wasn’t an employee’s. But then, the names—the single names—started piling up.

  There was a Brittany (that sounded like a Hooters waitress for God’s sakes) to whom he’d texted:

  Great seeing you baby.

  And to a Linda:

  Can I try that again?

  And to Jennifer he wrote:

  See you later?

  The conversations were sultry, but not conclusive. He’d deleted most of the conversations, so Caroline could only see a cryptic few lines. It wasn’t necessarily actual sex they were referring to, with a time and a place. Knowing Eddie’s voracious appetite for attention, there was a minute chance these were flirtations, not actions. But still, the texts were very suggestive, and certainly not something a person wrote to a colleague, or even to a friend.

  So many more women than she suspected.

  First, Caroline briefly considered throwing the iPad onto rushing Fifth Avenue traffic. But she feared she might hurt someone. What she really felt like doing was throwing up.

  Then, knowing that Eddie Clarkson loved a good competitive game, she decided it would be much more fun to get even.

  Chapter 16

  Meanwhile Down the Avenue . . .

  Same mid-June morning

  On Fifth Avenue, a few blocks south on Seventy-Eighth Street, Annabelle von Tattenbach heard her phone ping at 6:18 a.m. This surprised her; a text unusual at this hour. Down the hall, her four blond daughters were enveloped in their nineteenth-century canopy beds, inherited from Arthur’s family estate in Düsseldorf. Each majestic bed frame was draped in Cowtan & Tout pastel toiles and velvet ties and borders. When Annabelle checked on the girls at night, they were hard to locate among the mounds of plush down comforters and pillows. The little princesses were still asleep, blissfully unaware a new day had begun.

  Annabelle’s friends never texted before eight in the morning. They all knew about Arthur’s spritely sexual appetite that had to be serviced before he left for work. He claimed the release helped him focus better on market volatility.

  The prognostications on Fox Business News from his study one room down seeped into their master suite. Arthur, who had left the bedroom an hour earlier, was surely scrutinizing the four computer screens on his desk. The European exchanges had been open for hours already, so he was executing trades to enhance his colossal family fortune.

  Annabelle reached across her moss-green, snakeskin table for her phone. She was correct: this was not a girlfriend checking in. The text came from Philippe de Montaigne at the barn. Her complexion now matched the blush Pratesi linens surrounding her. She pulled the soft covers over her head and breathed in deeply through her nose—the way her meditation coach, Bob Roth (whose client list included Stella McCartney and Michael J. Fox), had taught her.

  Blindly, from under the goose down comforter, she reached for the teeny clicker on the table next to her in the little leopard skin bowl. She aimed it at the fireplace in front of her bed. After the regular three-second delay, a burst of gas and flames erupted behind the glass partition. The fire warmed the room, and the gentle, flickering light illuminated the Sister Parish sagebrush wallpaper just as her designer had promised. Even in June, the warmth helped put her in the mood. The request from Arthur’s mahogany dressing suite would come soon.

  When Philippe told her that he’d like to stay in touch via text from his personal phone, she shouldn’t have whispered back, “Sounds perfect.” She wished she’d been more standoffish, kept it on the professional more formal lines of communication through the barn secretary.

  Philippe felt he was well-practiced in conversing with nuanced meaning, though his text this morning came off plenty direct:

  I’m glad our plan to stay in touch on text makes you happy.

  . . . there are so many ways to make a woman happy.

  Annabelle got out of bed at that, needing to cool off or just move, and sat in the curved-back lounge chair in the corner of her peach marble bathroom suite. She lay her head back. The cushions were soft here too, and she grabbed the white cashmere blanket folded at the edge and curled up a bit, her hands warm and clasped between her legs.

  Her mother, Bunny Digby’s, warning rang in her head:

  One’s forties are a very dangerous decade, dear.

  The text from Philippe had made her jumpy, and she felt an ache between her thighs. She considered whether to relieve it on her own or to allow Arthur the pleasure of pleasuring her. She considered Philippe’s muscled and robust body. This was not good. Straying was too damn easy. This is why husbands do it all the time, she figured.

  She could drive the Maserati out to the Hamptons this morning, screw the daylights out of that polo-playing, smoking hot piece of ass, and be back for cocktails with Arthur. Caroline argued Philippe was an unsafe accomplice, but Annabelle felt the opposite. In her view, since she wasn’t seeking attachments, it was better to sleep with a playboy who was highly accomplished at discarding women. A gentleman might develop sloppy feelings for her.

  Annabelle knew all about gentlemen. Though she wasn’t trying to seduce them (besides showing off her pert breasts in those divine Saint Laurent evening blouses), men always fell for her when she sauntered into parties in velvet pants that appeared painted onto her body. Why remain flat-chested if you can’t go braless at dinner parties? It wasn’t her fault men were fired up by aloof women, by a teeny peek of a nipple through silk. Seated next to her at dinners, most men looked into her eyes in a way that made her want to slap some sense into them.

  She’d be done with Philippe by August. That was consistent with Philippe’s usual schedule as well, because he’d go on the polo circuit as a coach in the fall. He’d fuck her and be done with her—and she, for her part, was only looking for a slam-bam-thank-you-sir from him.

  And Arthur would never know.

  In fact Arthur had done just that a few years back with that French investment banker with the naughty librarian look from Société Générale. That skinny French bitch in the impossibly chic Dior suit looked so guilty when she delivered papers to Arthur’s office that day and ran into Annabelle. Not to even mention the Croatian masseuse.

  After ten minutes, Annabelle returned to bed, her desires still smoldering. The fire blazed before her, even though it was already sixty-eight degrees outside. The gold Tiffany clock on her bedside table read 6:55 a.m. The housekeeper k
nocked quietly on the door. Upon entering, Ghislaine placed a flowered Porthault breakfast tray atop metal stilts on Annabelle’s lap and quietly exited.

  Annabelle’s mother had used this very tray as a child in New Canaan, Connecticut. When her eldest, Laeticia, was four months old, Annabelle’s mother had presented it to Annabelle, along with matching napkins, on her first Mother’s Day. Ghislaine had thoughtfully placed the New York Post and the Arts section of the Times in the slats on the left of the tray.

  She poured her Harrods Irish breakfast tea out of a small Herend pot and into a delicate cup that had a lime-green butterfly wing for a handle. She swirled a dollop of blackberry preserves into the plain yogurt that Hans made every Sunday night for her. With the sterling silver mini ladle she’d inherited from her aunt Fiona, Annabelle sprinkled flaxseeds and granola into her bowl.

  Meanwhile, riled from the overseas markets, Arthur stomped down the hallway in his velvet slippers and silk paisley Charvet robe to his dressing suite on his side of the master bedroom. He entered from the center vestibule, avoiding his wife. His mood was low, and there was no point in dragging her down with the world’s currencies. The nonsensical trade wars made the international markets behave erratically, and they were too risky for his liking. He was holding today, stepping away from the chessboard for twenty-four hours until Singapore moved at least a pawn.

  He thought a steam shower would cool him down. After ten minutes, the stress of losing several million dollars in the last hour had sweated out of him. He stepped out invigorated; he’d make it all back, and then some once Tokyo moved its rook.

  He placed his heavy, strong body into the salted bath, which he always started to fill before he hopped into the steam shower. His shoulders were extremely wide, and he’d gotten a vast marble bath made custom. That genius architect had found a device that automatically filled the tub and switched off when the tub was full. He’d even taught that masseuse, Marjina, to draw his bath and pour in her salt concoction ten minutes before she finished working on him. Or rather, before she finished wanking him with her silken hands. Just sniffing that sandalwood oil she left for him got his fantasies flying in all directions.

  Arthur laid back on a cushion at the edge of the black tub, dunked a waffle-weave washcloth in the water, and placed it on his strawberry-gray thinning hair. With the water dripping down the sides of his face, warming his short beard, he admired the masterpiece of marble before him. The slabs had been expertly sliced in Carrara. The architect had set them so that the veins kissed like a Rorschach test.

  He lathered up his face with that special beard soap from Penhaligon’s in London. Fox Business News blared out of the small screen embedded in the marble wall. Arthur had seen a screen like this at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong and ordered his design team to copy it. He watched the bad news on the futures market and calculated even more losses. At least that Fox babe Maria Bartiromo delivered the bad news. He had always found the Money Honey to be an enticing and intelligent woman. Studying the curves in her pink suit, he felt another stirring in his loins that he encouraged with his left hand and some soapy water.

  “Annabelle, my darling, come in here!” he beckoned.

  “I can’t, I’m reading,” Annabelle answered. She sipped her tea resolutely and sprinkled more crunchy mix on her yogurt. “You know I need to have five minutes with the papers first.” Annabelle mined Page Six of the Post for mentions of her friends.

  “I’m feeling my morning urge here, darling,” Arthur said.

  Annabelle tied and untied the little string at the edge of her monogrammed neck roll. “You want me to get in the bath? Really? In there?”

  She thought of her four girls. She wished they came into her room more often in the mornings before arriving at the breakfast table. Their presence could help her stave off her husband’s need for sex. Unfortunately, Ghislaine and the nanny, Claudia, were too efficient at getting the girls ready in the mornings. They showed up at breakfast each morning in their Spence school uniforms, their knee socks properly pulled up, and their hair bows tightly secured. The older Spence girls, with little way to express their budding fashion sense in a uniform from an all-girls’ school, shortened their skirts to pornographic levels and wore thigh highs. Arthur explained to Laeticia and Louisa that he’d disown them if they even got near a tailor.

  “Darling?” Arthur said. “Did you hear me?”

  Annabelle answered Philippe’s text instead.

  Making me happy isn’t as easy as you might imagine.

  She regretted sending the message instantly. It was not any of Philippe de Montaigne’s business what made her happy.

  Philippe took the bait, and was glad she’d bitten herself.

  I’m told I’m very good at figuring things out on my own, but I always am open to instruction.

  I have been told I follow directions well.

  Annabelle blushed to deep red this time. Oh God, she thought to herself. Life was so much nicer when you could just tell the man what to do, and he did it. She wondered if Caroline had been right: maybe he was indiscreet, and perhaps these texts alone were no good.

  Annabelle heard a robust sloshing and swaying coming from the tub.

  “Darling?” Arthur asked. “I said I’m ready. More than ready.”

  She looked at her texts from Philippe again. She took a few screenshots, and texted the photo to Caroline and wrote:

  I’m guilty of one thing: egging Philippe on. I feel bad, but not horrible. Haven’t done anything yet and might not, but still . . . look how suggestive he is, I told you this would be easy. And don’t worry—the way you do about everything—I deleted the text conversation with him already.

  Then she deleted the conversation with Caroline as well.

  All good on technology.

  The screenshots of the conversation with Philippe, though, still remained in her photo folder. Like most people either considering or executing an affair, she forgot just that one small detail.

  Annabelle, feeling a tad guilty now, but strangely exhilarated, lifted her tray and placed it on the comforter beside her. She slipped down from her antique high mattress like an heiress from Downton Abbey and tied the sash on her Porthault flowered robe that matched her tray. (When Bunny presented it to her, Annabelle had laughed, thinking it was a clever riff on WASP-dom. Her mother, relentlessly earnest with little penchant for humor, only asked, “What’s so funny, dear?”) She then walked into her husband’s bathroom. He was leaning with his back against the sink, his midsection at a twenty-year-old’s full mast.

  “I love you, Arthur, but I can’t spend a lot of time on you,” she said. “Literally, honey, seven minutes.”

  “I’ll come back to the living in six. I placed a towel on the floor, so you don’t hurt your knees,” he whispered, closing his eyes. Then, opening them, he asked, “Or, if you’d like the full extravaganza, I’m happy to take you to bed and pleasure you to your heart’s content. The choice is yours, of course.”

  Chapter 17

  Not So Cheery at the Clarksons’

  When Theo appeared in the doorway of Eddie’s study at 6:37 a.m., Caroline was so spooked that she let out a strange little scream and banged her elbow against a chair. She slammed the cover of her husband’s iPad shut and placed it where she had found it: precisely two inches from the edge of the desk. She had wanted to re-read the texts and figure out if they meant he was fucking these women or suggesting he’d fuck these women. And who was Brittany? Surely, he’d shy away from a Hooter’s employee.

  It was her husband’s nature to flirt. Whenever she chastised him for it, he’d say that it was part of his knight-in-shining-armor charm, and she couldn’t deny that. Eddie would tell older women in particular how beautiful they looked—he felt they rarely received this type of attention. Or he’d wink and say, “Now, how come a stunning woman like you can’t . . .” Maybe his texts were mere flirtations. Maybe it’s just what today’s knights do.

  Yet, who calls som
eone “baby” if he’s not shagging them or trying to?

  Baby, I’m telling you, I’d love to talk later when I can see you in person, he’d written.

  Theo watched her.

  “Go back to bed,” she said sternly to him, scaring him and making it all worse.

  Theo began to whimper. He jammed his thumb into his mouth and shook his head as tears streamed down his cheeks, his little curls shaking a bit as he did. “Why are you being so mean?” he said. “I didn’t do anything!”

  Her heart broke, she loved this child so much and hugged him hard, willing those tears away. The Excel program was still open on that iPad, Caroline hadn’t had time to close the spreadsheets or delete the texting app. She wondered if Eddie did wake up, how long it would take the tablet to fall asleep. She comforted Theo more and laid him on the sofa, placing a blanket over him.

  “Why are you covering my head?” he asked.

  “Because, honey, the light, it’s going to keep you awake,” she whispered. “Just lie under there and rest. Promise me you’ll rest.”

  Caroline walked back to the desk to undo what she’d done to Eddie’s iPad so it would look the way it always looked when he saw it next. She opened the iPad and, indeed, the programs were still up and running. She told herself not to panic, that she had time.

  “I can’t breathe,” Theo said. He pretended to slowly asphyxiate under the blanket on the couch, struggling for air, choking on nothing.

  Caroline kneeled beside him and begged her four-year-old, “Honey, you can have whatever you want. Bad cereal, the kind we only eat on vacation in those little boxes. A chocolate chip cookie. A huge one. You name it. It’s a special day, and you can have whatever you want for breakfast if you lie here quietly for five minutes. Under the blanket. Five minutes more. Okay?”

  Theo yanked the blanket off his head. He squinted at her and whispered, “Lucky Charms. We don’t have any of those cereals in the house. How are you going to get some before my breakfast?”